A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government...

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become...

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark.

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Every life is precious.

Sex is like money; only too much is enough.

A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of...

Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.